Home automation, otherwise known as domotics or smart homes, is an up and coming technology that is integrating itself into the modern life of people across the world. As the practical uses of home automation become apparent to the public, numerous types of home automation technologies have grown and gained popularity. Competing technologies are available from Zigbee®, Z-Wave® (now Sigma Design), Echelon®, SmartLabs (Insteon™), and others. These are proprietary home automation solutions which operate in proprietary home networks.
In U.S. application Ser. No. 12/489,378 (“'378 application”), Chang teaches a system of home automation where the communication between Home Automation Control Devices (HACDs) is implemented through a peer-to-peer network, rather than a centralized server. The '378 application discloses peer-to-peer intelligence to household or commercial building devices such that devices equipped with HCADs can negotiate with one another to determine an optimal way to control behavior of the devices in order to achieve a desired result such as a specific energy saving goal.
The '378 application further discloses a home automation network comprising a cluster of HACDs that conform to one specific home automation technology (such as Insteon™, for example) and collaborate with one another in a peer-to-peer manner to achieve a goal designated by the user. Such a network may be used within a location such as a household or a commercial building.
As the deployment of home automation products becomes more prevalent, consumers face an increasing number of technology choices in deploying home automation devices. If two rooms in the same household each deploys a different proprietary home automation technology, the home automation devices in one room will not be able to interoperate with home automation devices in a different room. For example, an Insteon™-based device is incapable of directly conferring with an Echelon®-based device to perform a joint operation. If a first and second neighboring houses on the same street each deploys a different home automation technology and network, then home automation devices in the first house will not be able to interoperate with the home automation devices in the second house.
On a larger scale, the home automation devices deployed in each household in close proximity (such as areas defined by an electric outage rotating block of an electricity utility company) could be potentially used by electricity utility companies to diminish the necessity of brownouts during times of high energy consumption. However, the probability that all of the homes in the same outage rotating block use the exact same type of home automation technology when so many viable technologies are available on the market is slim.
Accordingly, a need exists for an improved solution for home automation management. More particularly, a need exists for such a solution that enables HACDs belonging to different home automation technology networks to interoperate with one another in a peer-to-peer manner to achieve a specific objective.